Lorain lighthouse to get home improvements this summer

LORAIN -- The Jewel of the Port of Lorain will get some home improvements this year.

New windows, paint, cabinetry and a display case for the lighthouse lens all are in the works this summer. The Port of Lorain Foundation Inc. is in the planning stages for a renovation to be paid for with a $190,000 grant from the Ohio Cultural Facilities Commission.

The lighthouse has been renovated in stages with donated time and materials. The Port of Lorain Foundation also has fundraisers including lighthouse tours to raise money.

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"Our biggest thing is over the years, we did so much with so little," said board member Alan Pollock, with the volunteer board begging and borrowing whatever supplies could help.

"It's a labor of love and there's a hell of a lot of people here in this town that think that way," Pollock said.

The $190,000 investment will mark the lighthouse's fourth paint job and the first set of new windows since the early 1990s. The board members said it will be a major step in putting a high shine on the Jewel of the Port.

Replacing 31 windows and adding a fresh coat of exterior paint could be daunting tasks on any honey-do list, and the lighthouse will have additional challenges.

There is no way to get workers, tools and replacement materials out to the Lorain light over land, and docking at the lighthouse can be dicey. It's a factor that landlubbers sometimes forget.

On a recent summer day, the sun was shining and the weather was nice, but for a brisk easterly breeze whipped up Lake Erie, preventing a boat from landing.

When the wind and waves flow between Lorain's outer breakwalls, the lighthouse foundation's boat takes a pounding. Pollock, board President Ed Baker and member Matt Dempsey rode to the outer harbor, but Pollock couldn't pilot the craft to the lighthouse dock without risk.

"We've got such a limited availability to get out there," Pollock said. "Our biggest stumbling block is the lake."

"Because you never know what the lake is going to do," Dempsey said. "That's one of the things that people don't understand. On shore there's a blue sky, it's nice. It might be nice on land, but on the lake it's a different story."

In those windy conditions, it is possible to rope up along the seawall on the lee side of the lighthouse, but workers must haul items up a ladder, not steps.

The new windows will be custom built to fit the spaces. The windows look rectangular, but their frames bow in slightly due to reinforcement bars inside the walls corroding and expanding, which pushes against the metal window frames.

They also are not interchangeable in size.

The window repairs are estimated to cost $67,000. A new paint job is expected to cost $55,000. The temperature controlled display case for the lens will cost $10,000 and the lens cleaning will be $8,000.

"So you can see how that money's adding up," Baker said.

The state grant first was announced in February 2011. But it also takes time to coordinate the work with the groups that have an interest in the building and to find contractors for the jobs.

The state of Ohio owns the lake bottom that the lighthouse crib sits on. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers maintains the breakwall and lighthouse base. The foundation owns the building, but the U.S. Coast Guard sets guidelines for the red navigational marker light on top.

The building also is on the National Register of Historic Places, and the Ohio Cultural Facilities Commission is supplying the money for this year's renovations. The Lorain Port Authority coordinates tours and will display the Fresnel lens at its new ferry terminal building at Black River Landing.